


By blood and by me, I’ll follow your lead

by lachambre11



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: 5 times + 1, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bellarke, Character Death, F/F, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Future Fic, Happy Ending, POV Alternating, Post Season 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-17
Updated: 2014-12-17
Packaged: 2018-03-01 23:32:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2791733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lachambre11/pseuds/lachambre11
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>possibility: a chance that something might exist</p><p>- or: </p><p>five times Bellamy and Clarke thought about each other, and the one time they did something about it</p>
            </blockquote>





	By blood and by me, I’ll follow your lead

**Author's Note:**

> my first fic for The 100... please don't tear me apart, this isn't beta-ed. Inspired by Ólafur Arnalds's amazing EP called "Living Room Songs". Listen to it here: http://youtu.be/Kb34JCz5wvY?t=1m1s

_by blood and by me, I’ll follow your lead_

 

**1 – fyrsta**

 

It’s been two years since she took her first real breath on this planet. There’s so much blood in her hands by now, and a space between her lungs where she breathes out her Dad’s name, Wells', Finn’s, Monroe’s and so many others.

 

There are scars on her back, on her left leg, on her left cheek.

 

She is covered in them, inside and out.

 

Through it all, he had been there. Wiping the blood from her hands, the sadness from her eyes. Taking up space when the emptiness comes and threatens to swallow her whole. Retreating when she says that _it’s okay, it’s okay. It’s better now._

He held her hands, once, when her mother had lain comatose for two weeks, a nasty bruise on her temple. A common injure, a bad fall. But that calloused hand was her tether to sanity, just like their continued existence is the miracle she wants to believe it’s real.

 

He hasn’t died, yet. He hasn’t left when she really needed him to, and when he did leave he always came back, infuriating grin in place, the graveness in his eyes dimming the smile somehow.

 

They got through a lot of shit, but they’re still breathing. They’re still keeping each other and the remaining delinquents alive. And this, for Clarke, it’s the headiest miracle under the stars. It’s not the sweet, sweet air of Earth, or the butterflies, or the apple tree they find that one time – it’s that there’s still life.

 

There’s still hope. She’s reminded of that every time she looks into his eyes.

 

She holds this miracle close to her heart every night before falling asleep. The way the sunlight bounces off his skin. How soft his hair felt under hands, that one time she’d dared to touch it. His heart, the big, soft heart he tries to hide under so many layers. The same one that pumps blood into his veins, the one she once held with her own hands, left her handprints there while coaching it back to life.

 

She falls asleep counting her own heartbeat, wondering if it’s synched with his.

 

But deep down, she’s afraid that she’ll never get to find out.

 

**2 – annað**

 

A crow of thorns. A dress made of it. An armor. She walks like she’s covered in them, like they’re shielding her body so that nothing can ever touch or hurt her.

But he has seen her bleed, in all the ways that matter.

 

By now, he’s sure has seen everything, all the versions of her. But if there’s one thing that still astounds him is her confidence. Even when things don’t look so good, even when it feels like there’s no way out, she finds one.

 

She makes it work. She survives.

 

One second from now, and they could all be dead. He knows that. Though they’re getting better at surviving, it doesn’t mean that it’s gotten any easier.

 

And there’s the ghosts that follow her around everywhere she goes. He knows, for he has his own. There’s the weight on her shoulders, and the crack of her voice that she only lets him see. It doesn’t feel like a privilege, but more like heartbreak because he wants her voice to always sound steady and happy.

 

It’s been three years, and the rock that lodged itself in his throat the time she said _you can’t run, Bellamy_ still hasn’t moved. He feels it shifting, once in a while, a slow torture, but never going away. It hurts whenever she smiles at him, a rare, fleeting sight. It hurts when she’s angry, or sad.

 

It aches whenever there’s that look into her eyes, the one that says _I’m tired_ , and she feels so far away that he pushes and pushes until she comes back to him, until she starts fighting back.

 

-

 

One night, right after the first baby on their camp has been born, a dark-haired, screaming girl that was barely alive but already had so much fight in her, he realizes that maybe there’s a future there. That maybe they can make it.

 

Miller and Harper name her Celeste – _of the heavens,_ Clarke whispers to him – but he only calls her Sweetie. She makes him pause, stop, breathe. He already wants so much that he can’t have, like blond hair tangling between his fingers, or to take back the 300 lives that he gave away on one selfish decision, but this?

 

This is simple. This is pure. This is the kind of love he knows how to handle, the kind of softness he’s not afraid to show. The pitter-patter of her feet makes him smile, and her chubby hands grabbing his hair make him feels less alone.

 

It makes him ache for simpler days when it was only him and Octavia against the world. It was easier when she was the only person he cared about.

 

Clarke keeps worrying about Sweetie, about people in their camp suddenly getting baby fever and forgetting there’s still so much about this world they don’t know, so much they still have to fight and rebuild, so much that still isn’t safe.

 

But he sees the way she looks at the little girl sometimes, like the whole world lives in the baby’s face. How her burden seems lesser somehow, when Sweetie’s in her arms, smiling up at her like Clarke hung the starts for her to see.

 

And he knows she gets it too.

 

This is what makes it worth it, all the pain and sacrifice. _This_ is what they’re still fighting for. He looks at her and he wants.

 

 _Someday_ , he thinks. He hopes. _Someday._

**3 – þriðja**

 

His eyes were fluttered closed, and there’s a crescendo of panic taking up her body. She can’t breathe because he’s stopped breathing. A hunting accident, Jasper told her, and they had been gone for four days – two longer than expected.

 

Two hellish days of wondering when, if, they would ever come back.

 

She had pleaded with him, the time before last, to stop doing this kind of thing. No more extended trips, no reckless behavior. They were getting too old for it, and she thought that he agreed, that he knew better, but there he was, bleeding to death on her operating table, proving her wrong again.

 

 _Wake up, you asshole_ , it’s what she wants to yell, but instead, she says asks Raven to pass her the knife, and then goes ahead and soaks her hands in moonshine and blood, _his_ blood, for the umpteenth time. Once she’s finished, and his breathing has evened out, she tries to catch her breath again, finds that she still can’t.

 

Instead, she opts for punching the shit out of the sandbag that he had made her.

 

She doesn’t check on him, keeps out of the med bay, and leaves the job to her mother, the one who looks at her with too knowing eyes. She doesn’t like it, and her knuckles keep re-opening, but it’s better than punching awake an ailing man.

 

-

It doesn’t matter how much she washes her hands, there’s still some of his blood underneath her first four nails, and she’s tired of staring at them anymore.

 

Octavia tries to cajole her into visiting him – _he opened his eyes, he started walking again today, but_ she stays strong. There’s no point in going there only to yell at him, to get angrier and to feel something in her break when he’s not standing tall by her side, but instead lying on a makeshift hospital bed. 

 

She’s done asking him to stop being show he is, asking him to think about them, about her. It’s been five years, and sometimes it’s like time hasn’t passed at all, like they hadn’t been forced to grow up fast.

 

He still doesn’t think twice before throwing himself into danger, into a trap, into the way of a fucking two-headed board with fours claws and sharp teeth that nearly tore his arm out.

 

-

 

Punch the bag. Wash the blood off your hands. Rinse. Repeat.

 

-

 

This ritual goes on for 10 days, and it gives her some sort of strange peace, to know that she can hold on to her anger for this long. Not seeing him helps, she thinks, it makes the hurt stronger. It validates her resolve to stay away.

 

She has every right to be furious. There’s only so much she can take, and seeing him that pale, the life nearly coming out his eyes, _again,_ proves to be too much.

 

-

 

He finds her on the eleventh day, sitting with Celeste by the fire, the curious little girl asking her to point at the stars, to tell her the stories of their people.

 

 _We come from the sky_ , she says, and her breath stutters, stops and restart when she catches him watching them from a distance, standing in Raven’s old crutches, his hair curling around his face like it hasn’t been properly washed in days.

 

She doesn’t look away.

 

 _We come from the sky, but our time there was running out_ , she continues, while Celeste hangs on to her every word. He never takes his eyes off them, and he looks more alive than he had been since the last she’d been near him.

 

The relief she feels it’s upsetting.

 

When she was younger, she wasn’t that quick to forgive.

 

But the way he looks at her makes her hungry for things she’s not quite ready to put a name on it yet. Not when she’s still uncertain if it’s the right thing to do. Not when there’s still so much to lose, and so many that need them to put them first.

 

She tells Celeste the story of their people, and don’t look away.

 

He doesn’t get to see her break.

 

**4 – fjórði**

 

Monty dies in his sleep.

 

There haven’t been any threats, not for a while. There are treaties in places with four Grounder tribes near their camp, and there have been five more babies born into their people. Scotty, Felipe, June. Celeste got a younger sister named Cora.

 

And his own baby sister, the first girl he’d loved more than life itself, has a son. His nephew’s name is Kai, a two years old boy with mischievous eyes and fast legs. He’d never seen Octavia look so alive.

 

To think that she’s grown into his woman, this mother, this warrior, completely takes his breath away. Back in the Ark, there was only death for her. But on Earth, she had found a future. It had started when Lincoln first gave her his sword, but it only grew from there. She’s so strong, and he’s so fucking proud.

 

But then Monty dies on his sleep. They’ve had a rough winter, more snow than they’d ever seen or could’ve prepared for, but he thought they would make it. They always did before. But he dies in the middle of January, while him and Jasper had been on the outs for nearly a week, the longest fight they had in their lives.

 

On the sixth night, Monty’s heart just stops. Gives out. Clarke finds him in his tent on the morning, wrapped in two thick blankets and the ghost of a smile on his blue cold lips. His fingers are clutching the bedding, and it’s hard to pry them off, they’re so stiff. His whole body is a like a statue frozen in time.

 

She screams, raw and devastated, the kind of sound he hadn’t heard for 16 months. His world stands still for a moment, and then he’s sprung into action. Take him to Abby, he orders, see if there’s something that can be done.

 

Tell Jasper to come see me right away, he asks.

 

Clarke was still standing stock still, looking into nowhere. She didn’t move when Jas got inside, didn’t blink when he broke down after hearing the news, sobbing and begging for them to help Monty. But it was too late. They were all too late. 

 

-

 

Later, they bury him by the apple tree outside the perimeter. It was his favorite spot, the place where he would spend quiet afternoon plotting experiments, napping in the shadow like a cat. Where he would take the children to play.

 

Jasper stays outside by his grave until sundown, stays until they force him to sit in front of the fire, whispering _I deserve it, I can’t, I’m sorry, Monty, I’m so sorry._

-

 

Her eyes never focus on anyone for a while after that. He keeps trying to pull her back, to force the shadows away, but it’s hard for him to be strong for her when he’s so close to breaking down himself. When she has barely forgiven him for his own brush with death, over two years ago. When he can still hear Monty’s last _see you, guys_ , or the way he smiled whenever they acknowledged his genius.

 

He misses his friend. He wishes that he had never gotten to know him, to like him. He’s tired of losing the people he loves. He’s tired of seeing them hurt.

 

-

 

Jasper is a mess, and he never really recovers. They hadn’t expected him to.

 

-

 

One night, when the weight of it all seems to give out a little, he finally tells her.

 

“ _I get it know”_ , and she startles when he speaks, really looks into his eyes for what it feels like the first time in years. “ _I’m sorry. If it was you I… I would’ve –“._

He would’ve lost his mind; that’s what he meant to say. But she intertwines their fingers, and the sad twisted mirror of a smile grace her lips for a second while her eyes go alight with understanding.

 

“ _I know, Bell”,_ she says, voice filled with forgiveness. “ _I would’ve too”._

**5 – fimmta**

 

 _I am death, destroyer of the worlds,_ she had told him once, a thousand moons ago. But there’s nothing dead about the way he looks at her when he think she’s not looking. There’s no death when he brushes her hair away from her face, no goodbyes when they stand shoulder to shoulder, facing whatever enemies have come for them that time.

 

There’s only a silent promise, filled with meaning.

 

 _The time will come_ , his hands says when it touches her. _We will have it all,_ his hugs mean. She watches him with Celeste, Cora, Jacquie and Kai, the whole brood of their camp following him around like he’s their sun, and she understands. She sometimes marvels at how her molecules seem to shift closer to the skin whenever he touches her, as if to feel his hands better. It had never been like this with Finn, or River, or even with Isis.

 

He glances at her from across the room, and there’s so much she wants to do. But she waits.

 

If there’s something that they can’t afford to get it wrong, it’s this. Them.

 

Because it was real. And it was coming.  She could feel it in her bones.

 

**6 - sjötta**

 

The camp grows, as do their responsibilities. There are always things to do, people to help, places to go.  But it’s getting easier to do this, with time. There are more hands able and willing to help them.

 

There’s more kindness going around too, and sometimes, when he’s feeling particularly hopeful, he lets himself believe that the humankind might’ve learned from their mistakes.

 

That they’ve learned from theirs as well.

 

-

 

There are a couple of weeks, here and there, when she manages to sleep through the night. When she doesn’t dream of floating in the space with her father. When Anya’s last ragged breaths aren’t perpetually echoing in her ears.

 

When she doesn’t dream about stumbling into Finn from across the clearing and see him wearing another face, shaking with madness and rage, 18 dead at his feet.

 

When she holds Wells one more time and tells him that she never hated him. When she doesn’t dream of watching Monty freeze to death, unable to help.

 

But those dreams come, as they tend to do, and he’s her only respite when it happens. He never says anything when she shows up at his bed, shivering – only open his arms, soothes her to sleep. Kisses her forehead in the morning.

 

Never her lips.

 

-

 

It’s been eight years and several lifetimes.

 

People moved on, built families. There are so many more of them now that it sometimes staggers him; the way humanity always manages to survive. They’re still co-leaders and nothing more so far, and the rock lodged in his throat still hasn’t moved an inch.

 

He carries it around, living unseen under his skin. Unseen, but not unfelt.

 

-

 

It’s been different, somehow, these past few months. As they settle even more into this camp, the one they’d been living for the past four years, she can feel it growing, the anticipation.

 

She can feel this electricity between them growing, the crackling of thunder, something that wasn’t there before, not even when they were younger and fought like wolves with their enemies and with each other.

 

She wonders who will cave first.

 

-

 

It’s him.

 

-

 

She’s just standing there, in the middle of the orchard he had been planting for her on the south side of the camp, near the Apple’s trees and Monty’s resting ground. It’s the first time she sees it, his birthday surprise for her.

 

There’s this baffled look on her face, and he thinks that she’s still the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, several years after their first hateful confrontation on Earth, even as tired and war-weary as they are now.

 

There’s something coming.

 

It’s a done thing when she shoots him this huge, radiant smile, and he can’t think properly, the stone in his throat demanding that he finally acknowledges its existence. She had put it there, he remembers. With “ _I need you. You can’t run”_.

 

And yeah, it’s been eight years, for fuck’s sake. He’s tired of making excuses not to be with her. He’s so tired of running from her and what she means to him. So, he runs towards her instead, crash course, collision.

 

When their lips touch, he realizes that maybe he’d been heading her way all along.

 

“ _Took you long enough”,_ she teases him when they stop to catch their breaths, but there are tears in her eyes. He realizes he’s crying too when she thumbs his cheeks, fingertips coming off wet and salty.

 

He sucks them into his mouth a little, bites just to see what she will do.

 

Things progress quite quickly after that.

 

-

 

His hands burn a path of destruction on her body. It’s frantic sometimes, then it turns playful, sweet, and they can’t figure out the tone for their first time. There’s too much there, piled up with years of wanting and waiting, and it shows.

 

His hand tangles on her hair, in a bad way, and it takes them ages to get it off. Later, she elbows him in the gut, and he slips off the bed. When he glares at her from the floor, she bursts into laughter, feeling lighter than she had felt in ages.

 

This was finally happening, and there they were, making a mess out of it.

 

-

 

It doesn’t live up to her expectations because it’s even better than the fantasies. This time, she gets to feel his heart beating against her chest instead of between her hands. This time, she tries hard not to close her eyes when he peppers her face and neck with kisses, butterfly light, tickling and teasing her, because she wants too see it all, record it, burn into her memory.

 

In her fantasies, it was always hard and fast and needy. There’s a place for that too, there, but it was so much more than the desperate coupling she had imagined. Because it was his eyes, and his mouth, and it was all for her. It was the bear burn that her tights sported after. It was the way they molded together, the way they took their time to figure out they also fit inside a bed.

 

How they made mistakes, started again. How he laughed against her throat.

 

How she bit his shoulder, and he liked it.

 

It was her, unable to stop touching his face. It was him, and the amazed smile in his face while he watched her fall apart with his fingers. It was them, moving together, giving into each other, arguing their way into her second orgasm.

 

-

 

After, when she’s asleep by his side, he traces the path between her shoulder blades, the valleys on her back, the sweet curve of her hips. He takes the time, takes it all in. Kisses her awake so that they can start again.

 

He has no idea how he ever got so lucky.

 

He knows they still have a lot to figure out, that the hard parts are still ahead and that sometimes she will make him want to tear his hair out. That sometimes he will disappoint her, or they will disagree and argue about the right thing to do.

 

But something tells him that they will manage it to hold it together, somehow.

 

They always do.

 

-

 

“ _When they ask you what your favorite moment is, you will say her. You will always say her_.”

 

—        Caitlyn Siehl, Her Her Her

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! please review :) I'm on tumblr, hit me up


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